Florida, You're No New York

The West Palm Beach, Florida skyline.

Photo: Visions of America/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

West Palm Beach, Fla.

When everyone fled New York to Florida in 2020, I was among them. Manhattan felt like a mausoleum and Palm Beach County felt like Spring Break. I teamed up with the Sunshine State, but more than two years later I confess: Florida, you’re not New York.

The exit and entry points illustrate the profound differences between the two. After landing at Palm Beach International Airport, the drive home takes much less time than the trek from security to the departure gate in the hellscape known as LaGuardia. The airport’s unfinished $8 billion facelift has made things worse, transforming Terminal B from a dingy maze into a cavernous mall crammed with duty-free tchotchkes, a cordillera of escalators, and a Vegas-esque “water feature.” is.

Florida is easy compared to New York City. Granted, you have to drive everywhere, but the streets are wide and pedestrians are few – partly because it’s muggy most of the year.

Florida can’t touch New York City’s sui generis cache of intelligence, talent and industry. But everyday life doesn’t happen in the Frick, in the Metropolitan Opera or in Le Bernardin. New York has an advantage in some everyday matters — 24-hour pharmacies, bagel shops, nail salons — but it lags behind Florida on countless other everyday benchmarks.

Florida works for the most part and usually costs a lot less. In Florida you can get an hour of impeccably maintained public tennis for $16. An hour at indoor courts near Grand Central Terminal used to make me $240 — and that was in 2010. I received Covid boosters in moments at a West Palm Beach grocery store. In contrast, picking up a prescription in midtown recently was a classic Manhattan horror show, replete with grumpy snakes and overwhelmed pharmacists. Florida is cleaning up the tax department and, aside from the summer, the weather too. Two pathetic words I’d like to never hear again: wintry mix.

But the sense of accomplishment in New York City – I survived another day here! – has no equal in Florida. As the sun sets behind the palm trees, there’s no satisfaction in surviving an obstacle course in a big city, nor in the thrill of being part of a city like no other.

Manhattan has plenty of opportunity to complain—New Yorkers’ favorite pastime. The law and order of West Palm Beach seems dull compared to the endearing misery, menace, and anarchic spirit of Mad Max in the Big Apple. Sidewalks that were empty during the pandemic are full again, and electric bikes and scooters are tearing willy-nilly through the crowds.

On the subway, squatters terrorize fellow riders foolhardy enough to face the mass transit. The streets reek of marijuana. What else? The dirt, the graffiti, the people rampaging down the avenues or slumped on the sidewalks.

Aboard the Hampton Jitney last week, I said how wonderful it was that the pandemic was over and New York City was back. The passenger next to me raised an eyebrow. “I think that’s why,” he remarked, “we’re on a bus that’s fucking coming out.”

Ms. Cronin is Associate Editor for Editorial Functions at the Journal.

In his keynote speech at the Miami National Conservatism Conference on September 11, 2022, Governor Ron DeSantis highlighted how Florida differs from liberal-run states on quality of life issues such as taxes, education and crime. Images: LA Times/Getty Images/Portal Composite: Mark Kelly

Appeared in the print edition of November 7, 2022.